Tag Archives: interviews

I added a new section to the site last week. While I was trying to decide where to host the new videos that I recently discovered, I realized that the current sub sections of the Movies section were not appropriate to categorize the growing collection of the website.

So I created a new one: it’s called Misc Movies & Recordings. I wish I had found a better title, but it’s really what it is: a pot pourri of all videos (and sound recordings, which are new) that do not belong either in Keynotes, Best Moments, or Steve-isms.

So, a recap:

– Steve Jobs Keynotes is unchanged and will present you with the most complete online collection of keynotes performed by Steve Jobs known to man. By “Keynotes” I mean product announcements and press conferences that Steve gave as the head of Apple or NeXT.

– Steve-isms is also unchanged, and is still a collection of montages of Steve Jobs’s favorite expressions, stage tricks and gimmicks that give some perspective to his long career as a showman.

– Best Onstage Moments has been reconfigured to be what it was meant to be: a real collection of cool moments to remember from Steve’s career, either because they were historic, dramatic, or just plain funny.To perfect that, I removed the video Tour of the first retail store as well as the Stanford commencement speech, and added a few that belonged in this section yet were glaringly missing. Those new videos are:

Introducing Macintosh, the famous moment from the January 24, 1984 introduction

Peace with Microsoft, the short sentence that followed the talk from Bill Gates at Macworld Boston 1997

G4 Cube unveiling, when Steve first showed off the Cube at Macworld NY 2000

The death of Mac OS 9, an astonishing show performed by SJ at WWDC 2002

iPod nano unveiling, one of Steve Jobs’s most creative product introduction, in September 2005

and the hyper famous (and deservedly so) iPhone unveiling at Macworld 2007

I hope you enjoy re-watching those videos as much as I do.

– The brand new section is Misc Movies & Recordings, and is home to a number of videos I had long hoped to put on the site. You can find over there short clips, such as a nervous Steve Jobs on a TV set in 1981; promotional videos, such as the first retail store video, or the heart-breaking Think Different ad with Steve as narrator; but also product demos, homages, occasional speeches… and also sound recordings, which I host on SoundCloud. There are three of them so far, but I expect that collection to grow. I have included the recent find of an hour-long speech and Q&A given by Steve at the International Design Conference in 1983 (more on that in a later post).

Finally, as indicated on the new page, I do have a number of videos (30 at the time of this writing) in the Interviews section of the site: click on the “video” filter to only see them. I decided to keep them on that page, because I did not want to encumber the Movies section with too many videos, and because I think they fit in with the rest of the interviews. Some of these video interviews even have transcripts, that best belong with their written counterparts. By the way, I also added a new interview recently, basically a mashup of extracts from Triumph of the Nerds.

Most of you have already heard of it, but Playboy recently re-published their 1985 interview with Steve Jobs on their website. I had read lots of excerpts from the piece for some time, since it is abundantly quoted in Jeffrey S. Young’s The Journey Is The Reward as well as Leander Kahney’s Inside Steve’s Brain… but I had yet to read it in its entirety.

It is a fascinating read to say the least. The conclusion is not a surprise for me, just a confirmation: despite popular belief, Steve Jobs hasn’t changed much in all these years. I have gathered my favorite quotes from the interview to prove it:

In their foreword, Playboy makes a pretty accurate description of young Steve, which is just as true for old Steve (try replacing IBM by Google in the quote below):

But to hear Jobs tell it, the money isn’t even half the story, especially since he does not spend it very lavishly—and, indeed, claims to have very little time for social life. He is on a mission, preaching the Gospel of salvation through the personal computer—preferably one manufactured by Apple. He is an engaging pitchman and never loses an opportunity to sell his products…

Unable to relent in his mission to spread the Apple word, he talked with solemn ferocity about the war with IBM—but then would punctuate his enthusiasm for an idea with ‘Neat!’ or ‘Incredibly great!’